GREENFIELD REGIONAL: Veteran Raiders’ coach seeks answer to solving Jalen Moore

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Shenandoah’s Dave McCollough has won more than 500 games in his distinguished coaching career.

While at North Judson in the early 1990s, McCollough coached a sharp-shooting guard named Kirk Manns — who led the state in scoring for two straight years before moving on to have an excellent college career at Michigan State.

McCollough endured two years of opponents trying to shut down his top gun. On Saturday in the second game of the Greenfield-Central Regional, the shoe is on the other foot.

McCollough’s task will be how to solve the problem of trying to control Cloverdale’s Jalen Moore, who ranked second in the state in scoring last year and leads the pack this season.

“It would take our entire starting lineup to match his production point-wise,” McCollough said. “Moore knows what to do, and I’m not sure you have ever seen a team lose a 2,000-point scorer [Cooper Neese] and then have another one right behind him. That’s just crazy to me. It’s really amazing.”

McCollough said Moore provides him and his coaching staff an incredible dilemma.

“The dude can score,” he said. “If somebody gets 30 or 35 in a game, that’s one thing. To average that, I know how difficult that is. In order to do that on a regular basis, you are a special player. What a great guy to build around.

“You say you’re going to limit him and make the other guys beat us, or you’re going to give him his but not let the other guys score. Which way do you go? If he gets his, and the other guys get hot, it’s ‘lights out’ any way.”

McCollough’s mid-week indecision is further complicated by the fact that while Moore has hit 59 3-pointers this year, the rest of the Clovers have combined to make 145 more.

“We started watching tape on them, and all of a sudden you see all these other guys hitting threes and then you realize it’s not even No. 34 doing it,” he said. “It’s going to be a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge to see how our kids respond.”

McCollough has coached for three seasons at Shenandoah, after coaching a majority of his 31 previous seasons at Noblesville.

The Raiders have won at least 20 games in each of McCollough’s seasons there, and were also in the Greenfield-Central Regional last year. They lost to Heritage Christian in the semifinals.

McCollough’s team is led by two third-year senior starters in 5-10 guard Chase Kinsey, who averages 14.5 points per game, and 6-4 guard Braydin Myers, who averages 10.1 points per game and also leads the team in rebounds and assists.

“Chase does a nice job for us and goes about his business the right way,” McCollough said. “He has a great work ethic. Braydin handles the ball for us a lot and does a lot of different things. They give us some experience.”

Senior guard Jordan Starks is a two-year starter, who was an all-state football player last year. His brother, Peyton, is a 6-2 forward who was the quarterback on the school’s sectional runnerup football team last fall.

Rounding out the starting lineup is 5-10 freshman guard Andrew Bennett, son of assistant coach Joe Bennett.

“Jordan has a little bit of toughness to him,” McCollough said. “Peyton needs to be a little more consistent, but he’s done a nice job to. Andrew has added a dimension for us on both ends of the court.”

Among the reserves are 5-8 senior guard Joe Huff (also an all-state football player), 5-10 freshman Kaden McCollough and 6-3 senior Dylan Frost (also a football player).

McCollough said his team was “rough around the edges” for about the first one-third of the season, posting a 6-3 record in its first nine games.

“We have a lot of football players, and it seemed like we didn’t get into things as well until the middle of January,” he said. “We hope we can continue that.”

The Raiders have won 15 of 16 games since then.

He doesn’t necessarily apply a label to his team in terms of style.

“I’m not one of those guys who does the same thing every year,” he said. “We do whatever we need to do to win. Sometimes that’s zone, sometimes it’s man-to-man. We like to fast break on occasion, and we like to try to get guys good shots.

“We don’t hold the ball, but I’d like to think we have a little versatility to us.”

McCollough said if he had been asked in December if this team would win a sectional title, he would have said no.

“I didn’t think we were on the right path,” he said. “Coming out of football you have those ‘football legs’ and you have to work out a few things. To their credit, they have done a masterful job of doing that.”

McCollough thinks his team did well to win three straight games in a tough sectional.

Besides beating Indianapolis Howe in the championship game, the Raiders also beat Irvington Prep and Eastern Hancock.

“The three wins we got last week were quality for us,” he said. “People were talking about Howe and Irvington Prep before the tourney, and that’s fine. Irvington Prep was the best rebounding team we faced all year.

“Two years ago, Howe came in here and beat us in the championship game,” McCollough continued. “Last year at Triton Central, we beat them in a real barn-burner. To beat them again is big.”

So what’s the key to winning on Saturday?

“We have to figure out how we are going to defend Moore and everyone else,” he said. “How we play defensively is going to be huge, and that’s a huge thing that will determine what will happen on Saturday.”

Comments
View 1 comment
Note: The nature of the Internet makes it impractical for our staff to review every comment. Please note that those who post comments on this website may do so using a screen name, which may or may not reflect a website user's actual name. Readers should be careful not to assign comments to real people who may have names similar to screen names. Refrain from obscenity in your comments, and to keep discussions civil, don't say anything in a way your grandmother would be ashamed to read.
  • Good luck Clovers! Great season, fun to watch!

    -- Posted by justasking on Fri, Mar 9, 2018, at 8:40 AM
Respond to this story

Posting a comment requires free registration: